I've mentioned in previous blogs how much I value the luxury (yes, you read that right) of reading books for pleasure. Despite how busy life has been, I've allowed myself to get carried away by an interesting novel.
Deepak Chopra's Buddha sure caught my attention. I was in a speciality library a few weeks ago now - a thing I do whenever I need an escape from the mad rush of my not-so-easygoing routine - and along with a few references books, this image of a blue boy in orange monk robes bearing the title "Buddha" caught my eye. I picked it up thinking it was some book about his teachings. To my surprise, it was actually a novel... on Buddha's life?
Here I was thinking this spiritual master and prophet was, well, holy. In my mind, the enlightened are somewhat righteous and let's face it, uninteresting. That's a wrong assumption. One of the things you learn, when you start delving into spiritual teachings (note how I did not use the term "religious") and digging into these teachers' pasts, is that no one has a perfect life, no one has a spotless past and no one has it easy. Actually, one of Eckhart Tolle's teaching is that for many of us, it takes hardship (or a modern "way of the cross") to push us to seek enlightenment. Some of us have a natural tendency for spiritual quests, others need to be shaken out of our "comforts" (the French say "Confort et indifférence" or "comfort and indifference") to bother asking ourselves "why?" and wonder about the essence of life and being. In Buddha's case, it seems to have been an intuitive quest which ultimately, pushed him to assume a monk's life. None of it, however, is explained in a way that places Buddha on a "superior human" level. Siddartha Gautama was a man on a quest to find himself and the universal truth. When he understood the truth, the essence of life, he then saught to help others seek it also.
It is not the celestial element that kept my attention throughout this story, nor was it the battles of a bloody war, or drama at court or even the love stories... The page turner for me was the question: "How will he do it? How can Siddartha and Gautama shed their suffering and egos to become Buddha?" His path was not an easy one, but he did achieve this as a man, not as a God.
The beauty of this book is that by filling in the blanks of his legend with his humanity, we can see how to better our life situations ourselves.
Interesting post, Mercedes. This one particularly grabbed my attention, since I working on becoming a scholar of religious studies. I haven't actually had the time to read Deepak Chopra's book, but it's definitely on my list!
ReplyDeleteYou're completely correct in that Buddhism does not consider Gautama Buddha to be God (same as any of the other 28 Buddhas, for that matter) - he is simply a person who acheived enlightenment and taught it to others. In the Theravada tradition he is consider to be a "supreme human", a man who was born but then attained a higher existence through enlightenment. Mahayana Buddhism goes a step farther, talking about the "Eternal Buddha", which means Gautama Buddha transcended his physical body, but his essence remains in the world. None of these, however, equate him to God - only to a spiritual and religious teacher.
I, for one, don't shy away from using the term "religious" when describing the teachings of the Buddha, because while we are conditioned in Western society to equate "religion" with "Christianity", the term actually can be used more broadly to refer to any variety of religious experience; that is, a sense of connection with the forces that create order and purpose in the world. We are so used to "religion" meaning "God", "prayer", "church" and "belief/faith" that it seems, to us, a bit condescending or inappropriate to designate religious traditions like Buddhism or Jainism as "religious". But I think we can.
Ok, that's my spiel! :)
I'll have to borrow that book from you sometime!